I'm losing it, and I'm just getting crazier the longer I sit here...Like crazy attracting crazy...He thinks he's a 20th century Titanic officer...and I...
Titanic is just a movie. You're self-inserting yourself into a movie, Em. It's all in your head.
Emily's paper towel came to a gradual stop dusting Windex on the glass bookshelf behind her register.
Unable to stop seeing that same creeping flood sweep into that same eerie pristine white hallway. The freezing ocean rising over her knees. Her heels and his dress shoes crisscrossed around each other.
James pressing his quivering lips to her hair, his voice softer and worriedly more lethargic, as he closed his eyes.
'Had I known that you loved me still...I would've...'
Emily ripped off another clean paper towel from the roll.
Shifting from kneeling in front of the bookshelf to sitting on the floor, as she quickly folded the paper towel into a neat little square and dabbed away another tear threatening to spill down her cheek.
What's wrong with me today?
It'd taken everything in her to put on a strong face for James, as they said goodbye at her door.
She didn't want Moody to keep worrying about her, since that day he'd watched her come undone in the park.
But most of all, she didn't want him to think any differently of her now, after he'd seen the real her and what her "crazy" could turn her into.
Was it any wonder then that she didn't have any real friends?
Who wants to go hang out with the girl who "sees things", and might flip out on you any moment with a psychotic breakdown?
Nobody in their right mind had stuck around, once they'd found out what her tormenting reality was really like.
...Not even her brother.
How badly she hoped that same thing wouldn't happen between her and James.
Though only 3 days together they had spent, it was so much nicer to not feel so alone, coming home to her maddeningly empty apartment.
How happy she'd been to find someone else there for once, even if Officer James Moody was just a stranger to her.
Frustratedly, Millie dragged the folded paper towel over her cheek again.
I have to stop all this crying. It won't fix anything.
Rationalizing away the whole incident in the park, and how easy it was to actually fix this problem of hers.
Why overthink it?
She was overworked and burnt-out. All she needed was a day off, that's all.
A very long, long vacation from being stuck in this damn gift shop all day.
Because, when she really thought about it, all of her life was Titanic.
Every day she took a shift she wasn't scheduled for, every hour of that shift she spent here behind this register, every paycheck she couldn't turn down for all her bills. It all came down to her roleplaying this obscure stewardess in a Titanic museum, surrounded by nothing else but Titanic, Titanic, and more Titanic.
This museum, forever stuck inside an endlessly looping time capsule.
Of course, inevitably, the line between real life and history would start to look a little blurry to her.
And after all the hours she was pulling lately, could she ever really blame herself for going over the deep yesterday?
Wouldn't anyone in her position lose their mind a little?
This week was, after all, the anniversary of her car accident, when everything she knew before changed overnight.
Wouldn't she be lucky to get through one April without some kind of "mental event" happening to her?
Though...never had 'losing her mind' ever felt so real before.
And she hadn't even been anywhere near a car when it happened.
She was doing "normal things" that she'd always hoped she could one day do again with someone. And that someone happened to make her very happy while doing them.
And if "just doing normal things" couldn't keep her safe from her own head anymore, what protection did she really have against it?
How could she trust that she was really ok in the end, and that this wouldn't happen to her every time she tried to move on and have a normal life, like any other 22 year old?
And even if she couldn't completely trust her head anymore, could she still trust her feelings?
Like those feelings she couldn't stop from happening now...glancing over at her register and the miniature Titanic grand staircase clock still lightly ticking away on the counter.
Her mind finding something of a refuge in him, as she remembered the day she first found James Moody standing there behind the register.
'Look, it's late. And I got enough to do without you jerks making things weird around here. Don't make me spell it for you.'
'I've got no trouble at all with spelling, thank you.'
The realization of those unexpected feelings slowly coming to Millie, making her uncertain world gradually more certain as she thought of James.
'I'm clocking out now. So, I suggest you leave before you set the alarm off. Have a nice day.'
'What is it with you and clocks, eh? I've never known a woman to be so obsessed with the bloody time.'
And breaking into a watery smile she couldn't hold back anymore, Millie laughed a little to herself at that, as she used the paper towel to catch the smudged eyeliner at the corner of her lash line, just as it started to sting a bit.
'If this truly is a ghost story, Ms. Amberflaw, then I wonder which of us is haunting the other?...You...or I?'
Truthfully, it was Millie who felt haunted now, as no matter how much she wanted to focus on dusting that bookshelf, she couldn't stop thinking about James.
Almost as if...against all of her resistance and rationality...the cashier girl was falling hard in love with James Paul Moody, the quirky Titanic officer from 1912.
But all too late...as it'd probably lead to nothing for them now.
The unexpected turn of events last night had inevitably complicated things between her and James.
It's not like...after watching her fall to pieces in the park yesterday, the Titanic officer would come running back to her in full dramatics, come what may of the rain, like a finale scene out of Bridget Jones Diary, or something, shouting her name like mad into the wind-
"Millie!"
Emily froze suddenly, looking out toward the window pass the register counter.
Her paper towel pausing in hand, just before wiping away another smudge of her runny eyeliner.
And for a fleeting moment...she thought she caught a blur of a ghostly figure flying by the sidewalk pass her shop window.
Staggering along as his polished shoes slid across the slape wet sidewalk, James at last came upon the Titanic Museum Gift Shop. Finding that same door left ajar along the same snicket, which stood propped open by the same little rubbish basket.
"Millie?"
And forgetting again to mind his same trail of muddied wet footprints left behind as he dashed through the hallway, James checked every store closet and locked door to his left and right, until he found the one he wanted.
And the moment they locked eyes with each other, James knew from the very bottom of his heart that he'd be damned to ever let her go again.
"Millie..." James panted to catch up with his breath.
"James? What are you doing here?"
"You're not going mad," James swore to her, as he marched on willfully toward the cashier girl. Brushing past the coffee mugs, postcards, and Titanic stuffed teddy bears that blocked his way. "My God, Millie, you're exactly as you should be, as you always were to me, and I want no different, I tell ye."
"Why are you so out of breath?" a stunned Emily asked him, still frozen behind her register with her Windex bottle and paper towels in hand. "And you're sweating...Did you run the whole way here?"
"I came here as fast as my feet could carry me," he told her, striding past the Leonardo Dicaprio T-shirts and White Star Line tote bags next. "All to tell you that back then, my heart was, and has always been yours, and how terribly sorry I am that you have endured so much torment on account of me. I wanted nowt else but to give you happiness, but instead, I have left you alone for so long to question yourself in this godforsaken place, without you ever knowing that you aren't broken, and that you never had owt to be ashamed of, and that I've never wanted anyone more than you from the start. I wish you'd forgive me for so much, Millie. Everything I've left you here alone to endure without me."
"It's...ok?"
At least that's what Emily guessed she was supposed to say, in the face of such a surprisingly beautiful-albeit confusing-declaration.
James threw the register counter door out of his way next, taking down the one last thing left standing in the way between him and his beloved.
"James, you can't just barge into my job and-"
The officer abruptly cut her off with a kiss.
One desperately passionate kiss that lingered so long, she could only catch her breath again by breathing in his.
"Just kiss me," Moody whispered his behest onto her lips. "I'll explain it all in a moment, I promise. But for God's sake, just kiss me."
As if he'd let a thousand chances slip by to kiss her this way, damned for so many agonizing years to think of her and every single moment with her he'd lost in his own private hell. Waiting for that ghost of a chance when they'd meet again, and he finally had his moment to love her relentlessly, without his status as a sailor, or hers as a lady, or even death, or the high seas of time to come between them.
And though she knew it was madness that she should feel this way about a man she barely knew, Millie couldn't stop herself from grabbing James by the button fly of his coat, pulling his weight crushing fully onto her body as she deepened their kiss.
"They're not dreams," James somehow managed to get out breathily between their kisses. "Solid proof of it, I have. I can show you straight away that everything I've come to tell you is the truth. It's right here in my pocket-"
Millie put a finger on his chin, jealously turning his head from his coat pocket back to her.
"Later," she whispered, her lips chasing his. "It can wait, James."
Slipping her arms over the seaman's broad shoulders, Millie raked her fingers through James's fair coppery hair, as she pulled him down closer to her for another deep kiss.
And feeling her fingers tangled in his hair, James's hot-blooded skin ran with goosebumps, drunk with the enchant of her barely suppressed, breathy little whimper as he knocked her into her paper towel roll behind her on the bookshelf. Breathing in the heady scent of violet perfume and Windex spicing the air that they only scarcely let each other breathe.
And as a worldly man and sailor, it wasn't that James had never been touched by a woman like this before, but that it was Millicent. Every drag of her fingernails across the back of his neck felt like coal fire. His strong seafaring hands gripped a shelf of the bookcase behind her, inevitably feeling his body harden a little when Millie didn't stop. His knuckles whitening to control himself and keep his sensuous urges from winning him over and having her that very moment in that gift shop.
Awakening in him another fragmented memory, tantalizingly incomplete, fleeting with the tipsy redolence of roses, varnished wood, and violet perfume in his officer's cabin. The veiny tendons across the back of his suntanned hands tense as he gripped his red bed quilt tightly. Her skirt running up the black stockings and silk garters that artfully complemented her lush milky thighs as his hips drove teasingly slowed into hers. Far beyond the point of regret for that bygone moment when he wouldn't watch her quit his door again without hearing his say.
Her body rocking in steady tantalizing lovemaking with the dipping rhythm of his. Her softly delirious moans against his pressing lips becoming harder to keep quiet as he brought her closer to the edge of passion.
"Lowe may be the better man in the end, but he won't ever make you feel this way," James's hushed voice teased the rim of her ear. "You're mine alone to please like this, Millie. If it's more of this you want, you will have it, no matter what a villain they make out of me for giving it to you."
And feeling that he must, lest he take her for his, the same way he had taken her once before, James forced himself to break their kiss, dragging his lips to rest tenderly on Millie's cheek.
His better judgement finally taking hold of him, as he vowed quietly to her, "I want you, darling...Though, I know your workstead isn't the proper place for us. I hope you won't feel that I'm leading you along. I have every intent upon making you mine. But I cannot allow us to go any further until I have explained everything at home tonight, at least."
"I know," Millie sighed deeply, regretting having to let him go. "It must be important to you, if you couldn't wait until I got home. And it's not that I'm blowing you off either. I want to hear it, whatever it is. It's just...I still don't clock out for another half hour."
"Of course," James smiled fondly at her. "Still going on about clocks, I see...So be it. I've waited so long for you until now. I'm sure I can manage a half hour more."
And what's more, after what she experienced yesterday, James wanted to be sure the girl wasn't still in a state of shock.
Though he knew fully why he loved her so, Millicent still had no idea that his love for her hadn't actually began in her gift shop, but that their romance had burned a century. And until she realized at last who she was, and what he meant to her, James didn't want her regretting anything that her feelings for him carried her into unknowingly. He wanted her to understand completely why he looked at her the way he did now.
And that, alas, would take time.
He had a whole lifetime already to make up to her.
"Wait for me," Millie whispered to James, stealing a couple more kisses from him before she was forced to let him go. "Then I'm all yours to tell me anything."
"A half an hour, you say? Whatever shall I do until then?" James asked her, still in lazy pursuit of her sweet lips.
"Buy something?" she smiled against his.
"Very well," James said. "Then I'll have your finest key chains, please. A barmy lass I met in here once said something about a 3 for 1 sell?"
Millie snorted a laugh, "Shut up, you."
And taking one last parting kiss from her, James finally made himself let go of the woman he so greatly adored. Resigning to return back where he belonged as a customer on the other side of her register.
"Oh and James," Millie called after him, before he could quit her shop. "If you're going to be snooping around my job after hours, might I suggest something a little more subtle than my Dr. Pepper T-shirt?"
"Aye," agreed the officer. "Of course, miss."